At this point in his culinary career, Pete Barbera likes to keep it simple.
His drive-up chicken joint outside of Columbia Falls, Pete’s Fried Chicken, boasts only a few menu items –– the chicken sandwich, chicken bites and fried fish sandwich. Pete’s is drive-up only, cash only (unless someone offers a good barter) and a one-man show.
“Too many people these days try and reinvent the wheel,” he said.
Barbera has a background in fine dining. He grew up in Maryland, where he fell in love with the culinary world while hanging around cooks at a restaurant in downtown Annapolis. The first day he got in the kitchen, he said, “This is what I want to do.”
Barbera’s culinary adventures have taken him far and wide, from the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. to high-end restaurants in Hollywood.
After stepping away from fine dining a few years ago, the idea to open a chicken stand landed in Barbera’s lap. He had been trading homemade fried chicken for coffee with some friends who owned a drive-up espresso stand in Kalispell. The coffee shop owners were so enamored by his chicken that they said, “You should sell this.”
Barbera got to thinking.
“I wonder if I could take the concept of these little coffee shops that are everywhere up here and do it with just two or three things on the menu,” he remembers thinking.
He went out to buy a shed, and the rest was history.
“It was meant to originally just be a semi-retirement thing because I’ve been a chef my whole life, and I wanted to move away from fine dining and all of the craziness that goes with it,” he said.
Four years later, eager customers regularly line up, sometimes for more than an hour, to get a taste of Pete’s Fried Chicken.
The chicken sandwich, arguably Barbera’s signature dish, is made by hand with simple, fresh ingredients.
Brbera marinates his chicken in buttermilk, coats it in flour, fries it in pure peanut oil (a lighter alternative to other cooking oils), and layers it on a toasted bun with Carolina slaw and an optional fried egg or pickle. Customers can choose from a handful of seasonings and sauces –– barbeque, buffalo, chipotle ranch, gochujang mayo –– but the sandwich itself follows a simple formula. Barbera cuts every single piece of chicken by hand. Nothing is frozen or kept warm with a heat lamp. Pete’s customers should expect to wait a little while for their lunch to be ready. As Barbera notes, this isn’t fast food.
“When you order is when I cook it,” he said. “If I’m frying, my hands are in the batter.”
In four years, he’s expanded the menu slightly. He added a halibut sandwich, and he’ll sometimes throw in a special, from Kielbasa mozzarella corn dogs to fig and pistachio cannolis.
Barbera doesn’t care about catering to everyone. He’s confident in his recipes –– basic, time-tested and grounded in the culinary art of balancing salt, acid and fat.
“I like making simple, delicious food,” he said. “You can’t beat it. It’s that good.”
Details
Description: Fried chicken on a toasted bun, topped with Carolina slaw and your choice of seasonings and sauces.
Price: $13 (Pete’s is cash only)
Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Location: 37 Arcadia Way, Columbia Falls
Contact: @petesfriedchixmt on Instagram